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When Chip Ganassi was five, his father gave him and his cousins a number of go-karts he had confiscated from the owner of a go-kart track who had failed to pay his bill after the elder Ganassi had paved the track. That early experience led the young Ganassi to high school dirt-bike motocross contests, motorcycle racing and, eventually, professional auto racing.

Richard Thompson is an enthusiastic self-proclaimed entrepreneur. "I've never had a job my whole life that I didn't create," he told me as we talked in his finely refurbished Hawker 700A on the Jet Aviation ramp at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport.

In 1999, when Kenny Dichter took his first private jet ride on a friend's Hawker 800XP from New York to Boston, the airplane wasn't all that took wing. Dichter spotted an untapped market. Less than a decade later, he helms a jet-card subsidiary to industry giant NetJets that had sales of approximately $800 million to $900 million last year.

"I try to live by one simple rule," said T. Boone Pickens. "Work eight hours and sleep eight hours, and make sure they are not the same eight hours." He chuckled and then added, "But I have to tell you, I'm not doing so well these days following that rule. I need a hell of a lot more than eight hours to get in all the work I need to do."

Real estate developer Richard Friedman has been winning plaudits for his unusual latest project: the transformation of the historic Charles Street Jail in Boston's Beacon Hill district into the luxurious, award-winning Liberty Hotel.

The aviation bug bit Alex Wilcox at an early age, back when an airline pilot could invite a wide-eyed youngster into the cockpit during a long flight. Wilcox's Swiss mother and American father spent lots of time in Europe, and he vividly recalls extended conversations with pilots while crossing the North Atlantic.

It didn't take long for 28-year-old golfer Adam Scott to accumulate all the trappings of sports superstardom. Eight years after turning pro, he commands more than $8 million a year in endorsement fees and has accumulated $23 million in tournament winnings.

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“[New billionaires in fast-growing countries] have to buy longer-range airplanes. If you’re flying from Mongolia to Nigeria, it’s either a three-day journey flying commercial or a nine-hour flight on your jet.”